The spaghetti junction looks a bit chaotic, but enclosing it inside the polycarb box is a great move.

Hi Chris,
I can tidy up the wiring by making the wiring shorter, the polycarbonate was based on your design. My choice of batteries pretty much determined the design. I do want to get hold of some EIG's or Farasis pouch cells though simolar to yours but I will have to save up first.

kfong wrote:That is one scary pack! I'm imagining all that weight resting on the bottom packs with no support when going over bumps. I would of gone with the latest generation power tool cells. They now equal or exceed lipo's capacity in the same amount of space without the fire hazard. I can't even imagine what your pack will do if it catches fire, since no one has documented a fire with that many packs. I'm cautious enough with my lipos, but I would be absolutly nervous with yours. I hope you have a safe area to charge and store the bike. I've only seen that amount in cars, but at least stored in the metal trunk.

Hi kfong,
You have a point, the pack has 4 shelves, all the shelves have 3 rows apart from the top which has two rows. This reduces the weight on the bottom rows to only two batteries which is manageable. I will be installing a fire supprescent as a precaution once I work out where to store it. The batteries are of good quality and protected by lvc and hvc circuits and a good charger.

I mentioned in Chris Jones' reply about larger format pouch cells which I will build in the next iteration of this pack.

Provided the QC has been done on the LiPo packs, and they are kept within their happy range, I see no reason this pack will ever self-immolate. My battery is 9 kWh of single cell LiPo and it's not got any shelving to support it. The lowest cell has about 0.01 MPa on it, and the point at which the cells start to show signs of suffering is about 1 MPa.

It has been a while since my last update, work commitments and finance has stalled road tests but I can say that the bike feels heavier on the front end. I will address this once I get the bike MOT'd.

So what have I been up to? Well now that the weather has turned cold I have been working on my wireless dashboard and looking to replace the LED voltmeter. I will upload a video of the dashboard and volt meter to my YouTube channel and link to it here.

In the mean time here are some pictures of what I have been up to.....

I was not comfortable with the idea of 84V running through the bike to the dashboard voltmeter so I have used an Arduino and a small LCD display instead. The system comprises of a voltage divider, Arduino Pro Mini 3.3V and a Nokia 5110 LCD display. This is the same display I use for my temperature monitoring. The voltage divider reduces the voltage to 3.3V, the box will live in the battery pack.

Voltage Divider

Neatly packed

The finished package

The screen

The LCD display will go in a nice little box on my dashboard. I know it is small but this is a temporary fix until I install my wireless dash board.

Bernel wrote:It has been a while since my last update, work commitments and finance has stalled road tests but I can say that the bike feels heavier on the front end. I will address this once I get the bike MOT'd.

So what have I been up to? Well now that the weather has turned cold I have been working on my wireless dashboard and looking to replace the LED voltmeter. I will upload a video of the dashboard and volt meter to my YouTube channel and link to it here.

In the mean time here are some pictures of what I have been up to.....

I was not comfortable with the idea of 84V running through the bike to the dashboard voltmeter so I have used an Arduino and a small LCD display instead. The system comprises of a voltage divider, Arduino Pro Mini 3.3V and a Nokia 5110 LCD display. This is the same display I use for my temperature monitoring. The voltage divider reduces the voltage to 3.3V, the box will live in the battery pack.

20141119_182133.jpg

20141119_184855.jpg

20141119_192625.jpg

20141119_182202.jpg

The LCD display will go in a nice little box on my dashboard. I know it is small but this is a temporary fix until I install my wireless dash board.

Cute got my interest in Arduinos refreshed when I stumbled over the "Postbag" YouTube series. Might replicate your temperature monitor.
It's kind of curious that you have a fairly regular (no offense) drivetrain and are spending your time on the battery pack build and I went the opposite way with the off-the-shelf AESC modules, spending my time trying to get my "fancy" drivetrain usable...

Anyway, we're longing for an update, mate!

A motorcyclist is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.
My Suzuki RF400 build: now with Enertrac MHM602 and 6kWh AESC modules protected by a Zephyr BMS
Renault Equation modded to 10S6P recycled laptop 18650s & 1kW controller.
Master of Electric Motor Selection: "Adopt a motor" (PM me if you have trouble editing)
All the gear, all the time!

Hi Marcexec,
I have been really busy tidying up wiring and making things more robust. I bought an isolated voltage transducer so I can measure my battery voltage safely. I replaced the little lcd screen and arduino pro mini with an arduino mega, ethernet shield with SD card and a wireless router. The screens are web pages hosted on the SD card as a webserver.

The plan is to remove my gauges and replace them with a touch screen tablet. I have also replaced the battery current shunt resistor with a through hole current sensor. I need to buy another through hole current sensor for the motor current, I was trying to use the Kelly controller meter output, convert it to 0V to 5V output so it can be read by the arduino. My RC filter didn't work though.

So far I have battery pack voltage, battery current, ambient air temperature, battery temperature, controller temperature and motor temperature as analogue inputs. I used an open source arduino sketch and modified it to get ampere hours, watt hours and power.

My next step is to source two frequency to analogue voltage converters so I can use a proximity sensor for vehicle speed and motor rpm, I already have a sensor for motor rpm which connects to the existing tachometer.

Once I am happy with the readings I will remove all the analogue gauges from the console. I have bought a spare console surround so I can start hacking it up ready for the tablet.

Hi Everyone,
It's been a while since I last posted and I have a few updates. Back in March after powering up the bike from being idle over the winter period the Kelly controller red led stays on for about 20 minutes before it starts flashing. The codes are 2,2 and 3,1. I have to turn the power off then back on again before it works normally. There had not been any changes to the wiring since I had left it standing, I have assumed that the cold conditions had somehow allowed moisture to affect the internals. Any way once I got the bike going I was then having problems with my 12V system, I had a Kelly 72V/12V DC converter, this was my mistake, I should have bought the 72V/13.5V version. So I replaced it with the 72V/13.5V version and that cleared up the 12V system faults. We are now in April and I'm test riding the bike with the 70Ah pack, I'm riding round the village at 30 and 40 mph to test the range when the controller cuts in and out again. It seems to be a low voltage and I get the 2,2 (Internal voltage fault) and 3,2 (transient fault). I contacted Kelly Controls and they gave me some tips and how to diagnose the fault. I will strip the bike down and have a look at the controller during the May Half term holiday.

This evening the weather has improved and its 22 degrees C, I fire up the bike and the controller goes straight to green! I am making another assumption here that the condition is temperature related. I will monitor it for now and see what happens.

Any way I have some good data for those wishing to convert a 600 ICE bike to electric:-
1. 74V nominal is not enough voltage, top speed is 75 mph with 15T/47T ratio and my 85kg's on the bike
2. Acceleration with the 600A Kelly Controller set at max amps takes about 11 to 14 seconds to get to 60mph
3.Make sure, if you use a DC/DC converter for your 12V system, it can still operate at the lowest level of your battery discharge capacity. (I need 60V to 84V), the 13.5V DC converter lower limit is 68V, this might be why my controller kept cutting out.
4.RC LiPo packs are okay for prototyping and proof of concept but not for everyday use, I am now looking at getting some EIG or Enerdel pouch cells once I find the money.
5.At 74V nominal the voltage sagged to 70V with the throttle full open trying to get to 70 mph.
6. At 70mph motor speed = 2800 rpm

I have an Arduino installed which receives pack voltage, battery discharge current, rear wheel speed and temperature readings for ambient, battery, controller and motor. I will write a script on the arduino to carry out some data logging.

I spent yesterday evening tracing the wiring fault. It turned out to be damaged cable on 24V negative to the controller. The hall sensors from the motor are tied to this cable also. Any way the cable was repaired, I took the bike out for a test ride and ringed its neck for about 7 miles and all was good, no controller faults.

The ambient temperature was 14 degrees C and the controller case reached 45 degrees C and the motor climbed to 120 degrees C. I guess I need to make some modifications to the motor cooling.

The controller still has a power up error which clears when I power cycle it. I am looking at a Sevcon Gen4 Size 6. I found a UK supplier which is great, he also sells the programmer complete with cable. Better get saving!

It's been a while since my last post, what's happened? Well the only thing of note is that a trashed my battery pack. I hadn't ridden it for three months and forgot to push the emergency stop button in. As a result my voltmeter drained the pack.

I will be rescuing the cells that did not over discharge over the next few months and make a new pack.

As luck would have it I have come into a source of "FREE" Samung ICR18650-22P cells. I know they are not the latest but they are FREE, as they come in I will start building a new pack with these cells.

Samsung ICR18650-22P

I now have the opportunity to build a pack to any configuration I like within the confines of the battery box space. So what are my Options? Well here is a table below of what I have come up with so far.

Battery Table

Battery table.JPG (26.01 KiB) Viewed 1031 times

I need a new controller, as mine has a fault, so I am looking at the high voltage Kelly Controllers. Any help in deciding would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Chris,
I am not looking to build a race bike.............yet! I guess I mean higher voltage than 74V, with 18650 cells I can go to 130V, if I reconfigure my current batteries, 5S 5Ah I would go to 92.5V. I am looking at either the 144V 600A or 120V 1000A Kelly brushless controllers. I am trying to the maximum out of my ME0913. Kelly's are cheap and easy to program.

I am salvaging the good batteries from my trashed pack so I hope to be back on the road by the end of March.

Hello everyone, some movements on my project. I have just ordered a Mobipus 72600, it seems this controller gives good power. I will run it at my current nominal voltage, 74V and get some base line data.

My battery pack rebuild is slow going, Enerdel and EIG cells are way too expensive. Nissan Leaf cells are affordable at a stretch. There is a damaged repairable leaf for sale on eBay for £3795 complete with battery, I might go for it.

In the mean time I will make a 20S 20Ah and 22S 20Ah pack for performance testing. The Mobipus maximum voltage is 90V.

There is a bit of a delay on the Mobipus delivery so I snapped up a Sevcon Gen4 80V 350A cheap to get the bike going. I am now sourcing the IXXAT USB to CAN V2 D SUB9, DVT and 913 dcf.
Fingers crossed everybody.

Bernel wrote:There is a bit of a delay on the Mobipus delivery so I snapped up a Sevcon Gen4 80V 350A cheap to get the bike going. I am now sourcing the IXXAT USB to CAN V2 D SUB9, DVT and 913 dcf.
Fingers crossed everybody.

A motorcyclist is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.
My Suzuki RF400 build: now with Enertrac MHM602 and 6kWh AESC modules protected by a Zephyr BMS
Renault Equation modded to 10S6P recycled laptop 18650s & 1kW controller.
Master of Electric Motor Selection: "Adopt a motor" (PM me if you have trouble editing)
All the gear, all the time!